Raqṣ sharqī (“eastern dance”), the Egyptian concert dance form commonly known as belly dance, is one of the most beguiling yet misunderstood dance forms in the world.” It is a highly popular transnational practice, with a complex history, tied to unequal power dynamics related to race, class, age, and gender stemming from colonialism, orientalism, and exoticism Hence, “belly dance” is a dance practice that has specific cultural and historical roots in Southwest Asia and North Africa but cannot be understood without taking into consideration its global network of dancers and the intricate history of how it came to take the form it has today. This chapter discusses these ambiguities and complexities, exposing and analyzing the different perspectives that are negotiated in the Brazilian belly dance community and its relation to the Egyptian belly dance industry. This paper delves into the different meanings attributed to belly dance in Brazil and in Egypt. It discusses how Brazilian dancers elaborate their imaginary around belly dance and its Egyptian origins and how they develop their dance style in relation to the Egyptian dance scene. For that, the construction of orientalist tropes in Brazilian culture, the cultural and social status of belly dance in Egypt are exposed in order to analyze the elaboration of different dance styles in the commercial setting of Brazilian and Egyptian belly dance industries.